The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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NEW YORK, Tuesday—I noticed in the paper yesterday that Senator Tobey, Republican from New Hampshire, has had the courage to say that "Senator McCarthy may be doing what he thinks right, but his methods are 'wrong and un-American'." He also said that the report of the Senate subcommittee which attacks "McCarthy's integrity and honor lies in a pigeonhole in the Senate and you can't get a copy to save your soul."

This particular statement interested me because I have suggested to a good many people who asked me about Senator McCarthy that they get this report and read it, and naturally, I suggested they get it through their own Representatives. I have now had a number of answers saying that their Representatives are unable to send them a copy of this report, and where do I think they can get it? It is evident that it is very difficult to get at the truth about any Senator.

I think it is a sad thing for both India and the United States to have the Chester Bowles family leaving India. With a change of administration such things are inevitable and his successor is an able man, but it is rare that our diplomats have an opportunity to understand as complicated a country as India. Apparently, they rarely develop bonds of affection, not only between themselves and the officials of the country they are in, but actually among the people with whom, by dint of travel, Ambassador Bowles and his family have met.

The unconventional things which, as untrained diplomats, the Bowles' family did were all good things to do, because they represented the simple way things are done at home or the way the Bowles would have acted as private citizens in any foreign country—and this was helpful to India.

The success which Mr. Bowles and his family have achieved in making friends for the United States may encourage even career diplomats to be a little less diplomatic and a little more natural. But with the natural approach, there must, of course, go real capacity. Mr. Bowles had great organizing ability and a background of education, business and political experience, which could be drawn on at any time and used in meeting different situations.

I was glad to see a picture of Mr. Truman with Mrs. Truman and Margaret going off on a holiday. They certainly deserve it, for ever since they left the White House I am sure they have been coping with packing cases containing the accumulation of the years spent in Washington. Nothing is more difficult and really unrewarding. You can't burn everything, and yet, where are you going to keep it all? Much will eventually go into President Truman's library, but in the meantime, I often wonder what he does with all of it. What a relief it must be to go away and leave it all behind!

E. R.

(WORLD COPYRIGHT, 1953, BY UNITED FEATURE SYNDICATE, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART PROHIBITED.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, March 25, 1953

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
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Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

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MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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